Adobe enters the hardware market with Adobe Ink and Adobe Slide

After making its name in the software market, Adobe has turned its hand to hardware with the release later this year of its first ever products in the space.

The release:

Sketching, Precision Drawing and Photography Apps Extend Creative Workflow to iPad; SDK Unlocks Over 30 Years of Adobe Innovation for Mobile App Developers

SYDNEY, Australia — June 19, 2014 — Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) today unveiled a new suite of mobile apps and complementary hardware that connect Adobe Creative Cloud, the company’s flagship offering for creatives worldwide, to Apple iPad. Adobe Sketch and Adobe Line enable the next generation of sketching and precision drawing on iPad. A third app, Adobe Photoshop Mix, offers a new Creative Cloud connected mobile workflow for anyone who wants access to powerful creative imaging tools on their mobile device. Finally, Lightroom mobile is now available for iPhone, providing the most efficient way to manage and edit images across desktops, mobile devices and the Web.

Nearly half of the creatives surveyed use their mobile devices to capture inspiration on-the-go and one in three would like to create more content on tablets, according to The New Creative Report survey of 1,000 U.S. creatives (issued June 16).

Sketch, Line and Photoshop Mix pioneer new ways to create content on-the-go and connect to assets stored in Creative Cloud. They were created using a new Adobe Creative Software Development Kit (SDK), which will speed the development of third party mobile apps that access cloud-based Adobe technologies, forging frictionless creative workflows between device and desktop. Currently in private beta, the SDK will enable developers to include and edit Photoshop PSD files in their mobile apps, ensure compatibility between mobile apps and desktop tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator, and offer never-before-available image editing capabilities in the cloud.

“Adobe’s new mobile apps, hardware and Creative SDK are perfect for creative professionals but, equally importantly, are designed for anyone with a creative spark,” said Scott Belsky, vice president of product and creative community at Adobe. “Today we’re introducing cutting-edge drawing tools that can carry the designer’s Creative Cloud identity, provide access to favourite colour themes, and can even copy and paste across devices. This is just one example of how our SDK will shake up the creative industry.”

Adobe Sketch and Line are both “Ink and Slide aware”. They also work without a stylus and feature a highly innovative software version of the ruler (“Touch Slide”) for straight-line drawing without hardware. The apps are also connected to Behance, allowing designers to seamlessly share and get feedback on their work with a community of over 3 million creatives. Products introduced today, include:
Mobile Apps

• Adobe Sketch, a social sketching iPad app for free-form drawing. Sketch gives designers a connected creative process bringing inspiration, sketching and community together into one place. Create with essential drawing tools: a graphite pencil, an ink pen, two blending markers, (brush tip, chisel tip), and an eraser. Get live feedback from the creative community as you work.
• Adobe Line, the world’s first iPad app for precision drawing and drafting. Line recreates the art of drafting, combining organic drawing with beautiful straight lines, French curves and perfect shapes that can be drawn in plan and elevation views or in perspective. Line can be used in conjunction with Slide and reimagines traditional drawing tools like rulers, T-squares and shape templates for the mobile world, as well as giving creatives access to assets, Kuler colour themes, and the ability to share work.
• Photoshop Mix, the most precise app for compositing and masking on the iPad. Photoshop Mix also offers powerful cloud-based imaging technology on iPad for the first time, including Upright, Content Aware Fill, and Camera Shake Reduction. It offers non-destructive photo enhancements, selections, the ability to cut-out and mix images, and the ability to open and save PSD files enabling a continuous workflow with Photoshop CC on the desktop.
• Lightroom for iPhone extends recently shipped Lightroom mobile capabilities to the iPhone. It provides the most efficient way to manage and edit images across desktops, mobile devices and the Web. Additionally, the recently announced Adobe Voice, a free animated video app for iPad, has also been updated to work with your Lightroom catalogs.
• Creative Cloud for iPad and iPhone, a new app that allows Creative Cloud members to access and manage their files, assets, and more from their mobile device.

Creative Hardware

• Adobe Ink, a beautiful three-sided hydro-formed aluminum stylus for the iPad running iOS7. It enables controlled, expressive drawing and connects to Creative Cloud, giving users access to their creative assets – favorite drawings, photos, Adobe Kuler color themes and more – all at the tip of the pen. Built using the Adonit Pixelpoint™ technology, the fine-tipped, pressure sensitive pen is lightweight and balanced for a comfortable grip.
• Adobe Slide, a category-defining digital ruler (and companion to Ink) for iPad running iOS7. Taking a modern twist on traditional tools used before computer graphics and desktop publishing, Slide enables precision sketching – straight lines, perfect circles, and balanced shapes – on the iPad.

New SDK Lays Groundwork for Creative Cloud as a Platform

Adobe’s new Creative SDK is a software library that enables developers to tap into Adobe’s creative technologies to build mobile apps. Examples include, browsing files stored in Creative Cloud and extracting elements from PSD files; Adobe’s “Touch Slide” software for straight-line drawing; and cloud image editing services like Content-Aware Fill and Upright. Adobe Photoshop Mix utilizes these new APIs and offers some of Adobe’s best imaging technology for applying Photoshop looks and compositing images. Adobe Creative SDK is initially targeted at the delivery of iOS applications and is currently being tested by select developers. A beta launch is expected in the coming months.

Adobe also updated Adobe Voice, a free animated video storytelling app for iPad that gives anyone the ability to create and share engaging video stories. Over 50 thousand Adobe Voice videos have been shared since the debut of the app in May and, by leveraging Creative Cloud, Adobe Voice now seamlessly syncs with users’ Lightroom photo collections.

Pricing and Availability

Adobe Sketch, Line and Photoshop Mix are free applications, available in English, French, German and Japanese in the Apple® App Store. The hardware is currently available in the US only, with plans to release in Australia later in the year.

The second release:

Adobe, the leader in creative software, today continued to drive Creative Cloud innovation by announcing 14 new versions of CC desktop applications, including essential tools such as Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Illustrator® CC, Adobe Dreamweaver CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC™. The biggest Adobe software release since CS6, it also includes four new mobile apps, updates to Creative Cloud services and new offerings for enterprise, education and photography customers. Yesterday, Adobe announced that there are now 2.3 million Creative Cloud subscriptions, far exceeding original projections when it was unveiled two years ago.
“Our shift to Creative Cloud has given us a broad canvas on which to innovate like never before,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Digital Media, Adobe. “We’ve taken bold steps with this milestone release, fast-tracking new features to industry-defining tools like Photoshop and InDesign, while introducing mobile apps that turn tablets into indispensable creative tools.”

The release serves a creative industry that is changing at a staggering pace: three in four creatives believe the industry has changed more in the past five years than the previous 50 and about two thirds believe their role will significantly change in the next 3 years (see The New Creative Report, surveying 1,000 U.S. creatives, issued June 16). Creatives cited new technologies as the top driving force behind the rapid change.

“The industry is dealing with a rapid pace of change, an explosion of mobile, and working in a super-connected world,” said Paul Robson, President Asia Pacific, Adobe. “The 2014 release of Creative Cloud enables us to deliver the magic that customers expect from Adobe. It also delivers workflow improvements that let users focus on creativity, a range of new mobile apps and a host of tightly integrated Cloud services that allow creatives to extend their desktop workflows to unlock professional grade creativity on mobile.”

“We are an award winning creative agency who are ambitious for our people, the work and our clients,” said Cassie Sacks, People and Development Director, The Works Sydney. “We therefore need our people to have the best possible tools available to them immediately to produce great work and meet the expectations of our clients. The lower cost subscription model saves money and IT time but most importantly it means our creative team has the latest tools at their fingertips so they are always one step ahead of the competition.”

“Creative cloud makes everything easier, more accessible, and more aligned,” added Chris Dwyer, Creative Design Lead, The Works Sydney. “I think it’s an exciting step in the evolution of Adobe.”

Mobile Apps Extend CC Desktop Workflows

Delivering on mobile innovation, Adobe launched three new mobile apps for iPad — Adobe Sketch, Adobe Line, and Adobe Photoshop Mix. The mobile apps were developed using a new Adobe Creative SDK that unlocks over 30 years of Adobe innovation and makes it available on mobile devices for the first time. These new apps are professional-grade quality but easy enough for anyone to use, similar to the recently launched Lightroom mobile for photographers and Adobe’s new animated video app for storytelling, Adobe Voice, which were also updated with this release. These easy-to-use apps add significant mobile capabilities to Creative Cloud and bring tablets into serious creative workflows for the first time. Adobe also announced the immediate availability of new creative hardware called Adobe Ink, a new digital pen, and Adobe Slide, a new digital ruler. The hardware will ship in the U.S first, with plans to release in Australia later in the year.

Your Creative Assets and Your Creative Profile Anywhere

The new CC desktop apps and mobile apps are tightly integrated through Creative Cloud services. This integration helps liberate the creative process by enabling users to access and manage everything that makes up their creative profile – their files, photos, fonts, colors, community and more – from wherever they work. Also introduced today is the new Creative Cloud app for iPhone and iPad that allows users to access and manage their files, assets, and more from their mobile device.

New Creative Cloud Offerings For Enterprises, Educational Institutions and Photographers
Adobe Creative Cloud for enterprise is an offering designed specifically for large-scale software deployments that works with other Adobe enterprise offerings such as Adobe Marketing Cloud, Acrobat, Adobe Anywhere, and Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Updates include more services with collaboration and file storage, expanded options for deployment, and a new dashboard for managing users and entitlements. For education, Adobe now has a device-based licensing offer for classrooms and labs, which allows multiple users to access software on a single device rather than tying it to an individual with an Adobe ID, critical in an environment where students come and go. And for photography customers, Adobe has introduced a new Creative Cloud Photography Plan for AUD9.99 per month.

New Versions of CC Desktop Apps

Beyond mobile innovation, the 2014 release of Creative Cloud delivers more Adobe magic, makes everyday tasks easier and faster, while delivering new support for cutting-edge hardware and standards. Highlights of top features in the 14 new desktop apps include:

• New capabilities in Photoshop CC for photographers such as, Blur Gallery motion effects for creating a sense of motion; Focus Mask, that makes portrait shots with shallow depth of field stand out; and new Content-Aware capabilities. Designers using Photoshop CC will enjoy enhanced Mercury Graphics Engine performance as well as the ability to link Smart Objects and share them across multiple documents. With improved Layer Comps, users save time by changing the visibility, position, or appearance of one layer and simply syncing to see the change reflected in all other Layers. Photoshop CC also has ability to pinch and zoom images, create smoother strokes, and deliver a more responsive experience on Windows 8 Touch devices, such as Microsoft Surface Pro 3.
• Also for designers, new capabilities in Illustrator CC include Live Shapes to quickly transform rectangles into complex shapes and then return to the original rectangle with just a few clicks, as well as faster rendering of vector graphics with GPU acceleration on Windows with an Adobe-certified NVIDIA graphics card. In InDesign CC, layout artists can now select table rows and columns and use EPUB Fixed Layout to easily create digital books. Adobe Muse CC has been completely re-built as a native application with 64-bit support, and now includes HiDPI display support for sharper-looking images, objects, and text.
• New features in the video apps, originally previewed at the NAB show in April, include Live Text Templates and Masking and Tracking, new integrations that leverage the power of Adobe After Effects CC inside Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Race through projects thanks to enhanced graphics performance in Premiere Pro; precise new keying effects in After Effects; a more flexible Direct Link color pipeline in Adobe SpeedGrade CC; and enhanced multi-track tools for audio work in Adobe Audition CC.
• Web tools now include the ability to look at the markup in a document using the new Element Quick View in Dreamweaver CC, which allows web developers to easily see, navigate, and modify the HTML structure of pages. CSS Designer improvements help apply CSS properties like gradients, box shadows and borders and then easily undo. SVG export in Flash Pro CC lets developers export any frame in Flash projects as an SVG file, while native HTML video support in Edge Animate CC allows the direct import of HTML5-friendly video clips.